US Immigration from Chile

Hello everybody!, I'm posting this because we're in search of words of wisdom.

I had my interview at the Chilean embassy for the CR-1 visa, and got RFE by the CO asking for more proof of domicile, since my wife (the USC) has been living here for 4 years already. I brought to the interview just a bank statement and quotation for shipping our goods to the US. Now I realize how little we brought, considering the time she's been abroad.

We had no issue in the whole process until now, NVC DQ'd us without any other observation. Anyway, now we are gathering these items to send by mail here so we can finally end this painful feeling of being rejected:

- Letter from the petitioner, listing all items and speaking about the missing documentation.

- Job offers and job applications from the petitioner.

- Signed agreement for lease at her parents house (they are our joint sponsor+HH member)

- Letter from the sponsors indicating full support and formalizing the lease.

- Voting registration status of the petitioner, the document has her address which we think it could help.

- Copy of the money transfer from her bank in Chile to her US bank account.

- Updated bank statement.

- Official resignation letter to her Chilean job.

- SSN card, which we didn't bring to the embassy.

- Amended tax return for 2020 (there was a mistake which the CO pointed out and got really mad about).

We're gathering the job offers, job applications and the receipt of the money transfer. We already have the rest of the documentation.

Our questions are:

- Do you think this is enough?.

- Does this mean the petitioner might have to travel before me to establish more evidence, if the prior list is not enough? is that travel allowed?

- The interview was december 19th and the CO didn't give any time to send our proof, except a paper saying that if we don't respond in a year our case is closed. What is the time limit we have to send our documents?.

Thank you very much for taking the time for reading this.

Best wishes and Merry Christmas!

Hello!

My J1 visa is about to expire and I'm not sure what steps to follow.

How did you do this? Any piece of information/help would be tremendously appreciated.

Thank you!

Wanted to share our experience, as its a bit of a rarer situation that I didn't see a lot of information about beforehand.

TLDR: wife was a precious green card holder, voluntarily abandonded it, not able to use ESTA to visit the US, was recently approved for a B2 visa through the Bolivian US embassy (though we live in Chile) because the Chilean embassy has been closed to B2 visa interviews due to COVID.

As in the title my wife was a green card holder (approved in 2017), then we left the US to live in her home country Chile (in 2019) and voluntarily abandonded her green card, because her father got really sick and later died. We ended up staying here in Chile, with no explicit plans to come back to the US. But we have had lots of issues visiting the US as a family since moving here. Chileans can use the ESTA, but once when my wife was 16 she accidently overstayed her tourist visa in the US by a week , because she didn't really understand the process well, but for that reason she can't ever use the ESTA (its an automatic rejection). Soon after we got back to Chile, COVID hit and the US embassy here closed to all B2 interview visas and have been closed until november of 2022. So she was unable to get a visa for over 2 years and we were unable to visit the US as a family (us and two daughters). I made a couple trips by myself but never with my wife or daughters (they are very young and if something happened my wife wouldn't even be able to enter the country).

So in January of this year (2022) I started contacting US embassies in other countries, to see if they were open and if she could do her interview there. The Bolivian embassy said she could, so we scheduled an interview and the soonest we got was today (December 2nd). So she flew to Bolivia and had her interview today. The interviewer was rejecting the majority of applicant withs 3-5 minute interviews, but after asking just a couple questions mostly about her overstay and her green card story (it was important to him that she voluntarily gave up the green card) and without even looking at single one of the documents she brought (we prepared a whole folder of job contracts, rental agreements, car ownership), he approved her.

We are waiting to get the visa back to see how long the visa will be valid for. Luckily Chileans can visit Bolivia with just her country ID card, so she can leave her passport there and it will be mailed to a friend in Bolivia.

So just wanted to share our story...and give hope to anyone in similar situations!

Hello everybody!

The beneficiary's passport expires by the end of february 2023. NVC already DQ'd the case and according to the statistics of Chile's interview times, we are estimating an interview before this year ends.

The webiste ( https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrate/the-immigrant-visa-process/step-10-prepare-for-the-interview/step-11-applicant-interview.html ) says:
"Passport For each applicant, an unexpired passport valid for six months beyond the intended date of entry into the United States".

According to this, we decided that it's better to get a new passport, but, is bringing both passports (the old one registered in the visa process and the new one) okay? Has anyone had issues with this?

Thank you all!

Hello! This is my first post on the forum. Thanks for any guidance!

I filed the i130 petition for my husband (Chile) in March 2022. We both live in Chile, but I have been offered a job in the US that is uniquely suited to my experience (hard to find a position like this), starting in November.

Question 1: If I go ahead with our 4-year-old son to take the job in the US while my husband works in Chile and waits for his visa here, we will go into debt every month, as the new job will not pay very much. On the other hand, I don't want to lose this job opportunity. Could this grounds for expedite due to financial hardship? I have already prepared budget examples, have the job offer letter, and a letter from the employer explaining why they need my particular skills/experience. I figure it's worth a try!

Question 2: I called USCIS about the expedite request, and they informed me that they cannot consider it right now because my mailing address on the i130 is my Chile address, not US-based. They informed me that I would need to change the address, and it can only be done via snail-mail to the Texas Service Center! Has anyone else changed their address and had any luck?

Finally, could I work with our embassy in Chile in any way?

I'm at the point where I'm just thinking about hiring a lawyer to handle the expedite request and the next steps. However, thought I'd reach out here first to see what you all thought!